You and punk!

[Astrid Kirchherr65]

I guess that for me, I know punk when I hear it ?

What I define it as (I am stating my opinion here/not fact ) is

Loud,Fast, and Simple(as in uncomplicated not minded) Riffs.
Sometimes it's just crazy
Sometimes it's got a point
when I hear it I just know it 'is'

and I like punk in many flavors..like ALL of my music genre.

 

[Flower]

Exactly the kind of argument parents were were making in the 50's.

Queen always has and always will reek.

 

[Flower]

Ian Anderson brings Jethro Tull to New Jersey for two shows

Published: Friday, June 11, 2010, 12:21 AM

Tris McCall/The Star-Ledger

Think you’re too punk-rock to appreciate Jethro Tull? Johnny Rotten wouldn’t say the same.

Ian Anderson, the charismatic piper who has successfully guided Tull through the shifting pop landscape for the past 40 years, counts the notorious Sex Pistols singer as a fan.

“In the ’70s, John Lydon was one of the most vehement denouncers of anything and everything that preceded his band,” says Anderson, 62. “He has subsequently revealed to me, in person, that he was always a Tull fan, and that ‘Aqualung’ was a pivotal record for him.

“I believe his pose on stage probably owes something to the cover of that album.”

Why wouldn’t it? Years before punk shook up the establishment, Anderson’s lyrics on “Aqualung,” “Benefit,” and other classic ’70s LPs challenged organized religion and confronted social inequality. Anderson’s wild-eyed performances as Jethro Tull’s frontman have been praised for their manic intensity. His eccentric style and sardonic wit continue to appeal to individualists of all kinds.

The flute-toting Anderson, who will take the stage with Tull at Caesars Atlantic City on Saturday and the PNC Bank Arts Center on Sunday, believes that reports of ’70s punks loathing the band’s eclectic, thoughtful art-rock have been overstated.

“Some of them really did have a genuine disdain for us,” says Anderson, “but much of the animosity was posturing for public consumption.”

Anderson, who has always been an instinctive prankster and expert self-parodist, has never been shy about taking his own shots at the excesses of the progressive-rock movement. The frontman confirms that “Thick As a Brick,” which contains one gigantic album-length song spread over two LP sides, was originally meant as satire.

“ ‘Thick As a Brick’ was written as a spoof on the prog-rock concept album. Of course, at least 50 per cent of the people who heard it didn’t realize that.”

Joke or not, the album remains a cornerstone of the genre: 45 minutes of hard-rock riffs, six-string blues, avant-folk, strings, horns and woodwinds, and over-the-top poetry written in the voice of a precocious, prize-winning 8-year-old schoolboy. It’s a massive work with wide-angle scope, and one that continues to resonate for ambitious musicians. “The Hazards Of Love,” last year’s album-length suite by college-rock favorites the Decemberists, owes more than just its theatricality to Jethro Tull.

Anderson isn’t surprised that younger bands are now following Tull’s example — or that it’s once again permissible to chase the progressive muse.

“Some of the music from the ’60s and ’70s is benchmark stuff,” says Anderson. “And people in their early 20s often do get interested in the music that might have influenced their parents. Once the disagreeable opposition of adolescence ends, after wandering in the family wilderness for a while, it can be a way for younger people to get in touch with where they come from, generationally and genetically.”

The Scottish-born frontman has always found the past compelling. He’s taken inspiration from the traditional culture of the British Isles, impersonating court jesters, voicing minstrels and lamenting the loss of Shire horses. “Songs From the Wood,” the band’s 1977 release, is a sparkling fusion of mainstream rock and English folk.

Then there’s his acoustic instrument; not the only one he plays, but the one that’s become indivisible from his public persona. Anderson remains the best-known flutist in rock history. His one-legged standing pose — with the other leg bent at the knee, foot pressed against his calf — has become iconic. It’s distinctive and entertaining, but it’s probably not the approach encouraged by most conservatories.

“I picked up the instrument when I was 20, so I didn’t come to it with any preconceptions,” says Anderson, whose overblowing, flutter-tonguing, grunting style remains instantly identifiable. “I had to teach myself to play it in a way where it could be audible in a blues band with four other loud musicians.”

Did heavy rockers ever look askance at Anderson and his classical axe?

“There was resistance at first from one of our managers. But we were all looking for something that would make us different from the other bands in England in the ’60s, and that was unlikely to mean adding another guitar player who was wallowing in the wake of the greats. The flute set Jethro Tull immediately aside.”

Anderson concedes that it always has been a challenge to incorporate the flute into an electric set.

“It always was a compromise to get an acoustic instrument heard. I struggle with it even today, where the little condenser microphone frequently fails in high humidity.”

It should be hot in Holmdel on Sunday, but we’ll cross our fingers for a dry evening.

Tris McCall may be reached at [email protected].




Nothing to do with Punk but interesting about the Decemberists ...

 

[Foxhound]

Exactly the kind of argument parents were were making in the 50's.

Queen always has and always will reek.

I agree. Queen defined overblown.

 

[runtfan]

So whoever promised you it had to be easy? After all, even a punk luminary such as Sid had to suffer for his art.

How was Sid suffering for his art?

 

[Foxhound]

Sid just looked the part, that's all. I like the Pistols but they were in essence a punk boy band, imho. Sid was just as much 'the real deal' as Andrew Ridgeley was a real musician.

Sid and the rest of the Sex Pistols were real enough to kick sand in the faces of the likes of Jeff Lynne, Chris Squire and Freddie Mercury with their back to the basics of rock approach. In so doing they reenergized the U.K. rock scene. How much more "real" did they need to be?

 

[Flower]

I've found this article from Classic Rock magazine interesting ....

THE STONES’ PUNK by Nick Kent

Although the Rolling Stones were a cardinal influence on American punk ground-breakers like the Stooges and the New York Dolls during the early 70s they were less highly thought of by the London-based movement that sprang into being in 1976. This in turn sparked yet another source of conflict within the Stones’ inner sanctum about how exactly to react to the ‘new’ music. Keith Richards for one was adamant about simply ignoring the trend. In his view, the Stones were leaders not followers and what punk offered in terms of musical innovation provided no worthwhile substitute for the blues and pioneer rock sources and traditions he’d grown up with. More to the point, he’d taken serious offence at seeing his band suddenly getting slighted in the U.K press by this irreverent rising phenomenon of three chord wonders. To Keith, it smacked of ‘disrespect’ something he automatically found unacceptable. Also it can’t have escaped his notice that many of this new breed – step forward Mick Jones from the Clash and even poor old Sid Vicious – were just aping his old look, riffs and/or lifestyle choices.

Indeed Mick Jagger said it best in a 1977 interview when he archly declared “There’s no-one in the world who can out-punk Keith”. But Jagger has consistently shown himself to be far more amenable about getting the Stones to tackle the latest trends in music and between 1977 and 1981 managed to coerce the band into recording several self-penned compositions that were noticeably imbued with the spiky energy and raucous caterwauling of the safety-pin and bondage trousers set. Both When the Whip Comes Down and Lies from Some Girls bear the stylistic hallmarks of a tentative punk make-over although Jagger wrote the songs more as a homage to Lou Reed than Johnny Rotten. By 1979 though he was affecting a full-blown cocker-nee accent for Emotional Rescue’s Where the Boys Go which found the Stones punking it up on record and sounding depressingly like Sham 69’s reprobate dads for their efforts. Finally the Clash-like Neighbours in 1981 marked the end of their brief dalliance with the medium. It was just as well. The Stones were always better off aping their black music influences anyway. More to the point, the punks couldn’t teach them anything about music or outrage that they hadn’t already learnt and put into practice back in the 60s.

 

[rtbuck]

^^^^I always thought "Respectable" by the Stones had Punk overtones ^^^^

 

[Aktivator]

Exactly the kind of argument parents were were making in the 50's.

Queen always has and always will reek.

happen not to be a fan of Queen so I agree they do reek.
huh? There is a big difference between parents in the 50's arguing that rock n roll musicians didn't play traditional music. Rock n Roll musicians in the 50's could actually still play their instruments. Syd Vicious(I'm not talking about other punk rockers) couldn't play bass. He was more into image, drugs and Nancy. In my eyes that is art first-music second. There is no way you can say that about Queen. Yeah they had a look but the music came first. So Syd's comment about Queen as art and sex pistols is music is silly. IMHO.

I like Punk so don't start the punk is music theme on me. Fully aware of it. My comments against punk artists and mostly there fans is the myths that have come out since the late 70's about arena rock, prog rock and any other so called excess rock. It's all rock if you don't like that's your problem not mine.

Are you still stuck in the 70's too? Music has progressed since the 70's and styles have merged. Today's indie bands have influences from everywhere. There are bands out there today that are influenced by punk, new wave, metal and prog all in one band. It's about time to throw out the old excess label crap and start letting these bands express their current feelings. This divide in rock that occured in the late 70's and early 80's has stagnated rock into different genres for so many years its nice to see it finally dropping.

Why your at it why don't you look up Johnny Rotten's influences. If Punk is all about 50's and 60's basic rock and roll why is Johnny Rotten a fan of Magma(funny they are operatic rock), Can, Van Der Graf Generator? Why because they were experimental something Johnny took to his next band PIL.

 

[Flower]

Johnny Rotten and Neil Young

In an interview in the Boston Globe in 1990, when asked about being practically the only old-guard rocker to get the punk movement, Young said:

Young: "I understood where they were coming from because what they were trying to do was . . . wake everybody up, because that's what rock 'n' roll is about. It has to have substance to it. There's an edge to real rock 'n' roll, where it's all that matters."

"What was happening is that we started making these layered, . . . produced-sounding records, which are the foundation of schlock- rock that we have today. And we were starting to do that in the late '70s heavily. So when the punk thing came along and I heard my friends saying, 'Oh, I hate these . . . people with the . . . pins in their ears, these people are disgusting,' I said, 'Thank God, something got their attention. These people obviously are doing something right because they're waking up these other people who are sleeping who shouldn't be sleeping.' "

From interview in French magazine Guitare & Claviers, April 1992 with the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten on Neil Young:


Q: How did you react the first time you heard yourself mentioned in Neil Young's song Hey Hey My My?

JR: I was scared to death, I didn't have the slightest idea I was that important! Besides, it's not that clear (smile). It's like left and right - - it's all open to interpretation. When I went to see him live he played that song and had the whole audience chanting "THis is the story of Johnny Rotten!" (Laugh) How embarrassing! But also what a compliment! He noticed me.

Q: At the time you were a fan of his stuff?

JR: Yeah, I've always loved his music. He's great, he takes risks all the time. You can't label him. He can do everything. He's totally free.

Sid Vicious and Neil Young

In an interview with Elliot Roberts, Neil's manager, Roberts was asked about a comment Nils Lofgren made about Young inventing punk rock:


Elliot Roberts: "Well, I think that came from the first Sex Pistols interviews when Sid Vicious was interviewed in America and was asked what his big influences were and he said that one of them was Neil's Tonight's The Night tour, which he'd seen in Manchester, because it was so dark and raw and anti-pop and he had done none of his old songs. The fans booed it after they thought he was gonna do another half of the show when in fact the show was over, and on some level it was that anti-pop attitude that people interpret as the start of the Punk movement which was an aggression and hostility. "


Neil Young Collaborations